Knitting and a brandy at bed time are secrets to 100-year-old's long life

Nancy Bennett celebrated her 100th birthday last month in the same house where her mother turned 100, Roselea in Irvine.

The royal birthday cards sit side by side on the wooden fireplace, one from King Charles and the other from the late Queen Elizabeth.

Outside in the garden a 70-year-old pink rose bush arches in the autumn sunlight of its 19th-Century townhouse garden in Ayrshire.

Inside, Nancy Bennett is celebrating her 100th birthday – the second one in the family home.

More than 30 years ago her mother Agnes, toasted hers with a soft drink and splendid white-iced birthday cake.

The house, Roselea, has been in the family for 63 years, its walls echoing to the sounds of children’s parties, Hogmanay gatherings, the wedding preparations of the Bennett sisters, Kay and Isabelle, and countless family dinners.

Today, Nancy – a grandmother of four and great-granny to three – is being fussed over by her family, some who have travelled more than a thousand miles to be with her.

Her daughter Kay, 72, said: “There must be homes up and down the country where families’ lives have played out to form our cherished childhood memories, but perhaps not many still in the same home more than 60 years later.

“Roselea has been at the heart of our family since I was nine, and in primary school.”

The cherished home

Even before they moved, Roselea played its part in the Bennett family history because it was where Nancy and her late husband Jack, sealed their romance when they bought her engagement ring. “By amazing coincidence, Mum and Dad bought the ring in the front room when the previous owner Mason Watson, ran his jewellery shop from here,” Kay added.

Nancy and her Jack were people of their time. Both worked as distributers for the former Tupperware company in its boom days.

“I am having a fabulous life, surrounded by a loving family,” said Nancy. “Lucky at 100 to have been blessed with a long life and good genes.”

Nancy holding her card. Her ring was bought when Roselea was a jeweller’s.

She still enjoys a glass of brandy at bedtime and her life-long love of knitting.

Her “baby” sister Jane McCutcheon, 95, has travelled from Spain where she now lives near her daughter.

The teapot is full, and Nancy’s home-baked cake recipe still stands the test of time.

Looking back on her family’s decades at Roselea, Kay remembers the hours spent in upstairs bedrooms where she and sister Isabelle studied for their school exams to gain places at one of Scotland’s former teacher training colleges.

“Then it was on to jobs as primary school teachers,” she added.

“Even as adults, our house was busy. Mum was one of five daughters and gran Agnes lived latterly in her 80s two months at time with them all.

“I remember the excitement of her 100th birthday when the Queen’s birthday card arrived, and everyone came along for the party.

“When the weather was good, we would have a big barbeques in the garden.

“Gran and grampa Willie had lived at Overton Cottage not far away.”

Love of gardening

While family members have come and gone, habits have remained, especially the love of gardening.

Both Kay and her mother still vie to grow the best tomatoes in the family greenhouse.

Weeks ago, the garden was a blaze of peony roses going strong after 30 or so years, along with azaleas – with both brought from Nancy’s Overton Cottage childhood home.

The apple tree still delivers its promise of fruit, perhaps desperate not to outshone by the snow-white mock orange shrub just a few feet away. It started as a cutting from Kay’s wedding bouquet decades ago.

She said: “We still put up a real fir Christmas tree in the window of the front room and always will as long as we live at Roselea, but we now decorate it a few weeks earlier than in our childhood.

“Back then, Mr Cornelius, the grocer from Kilwinning, threw it over the garden wall when he delivered it on Christmas Eve, and it was a scramble to get all the baubles on in time.”

Nancy's mother Agnes’ message from Queen Elizabeth. — Nancy’s mother Agnes’ message from Queen Elizabeth.

Treasured mementoes from their grandparents’ farmhouse home have joined those collected over the years.

Above Nancy’s fireside chair is a portrait of Ayrshire and world- famous poet Rabbie Burns, which was handed down from her father.

Burns was born just 30 minutes’ away in Alloway Cottage.

Kay said: “Three generations of children have played at our family home and I know we will have to move on some day, but we will take with us countless memories.”

Traquair in Peeblesshire is Scotland’s oldest inhabited home, dating back to at least 1107 and has been lived in by the Stewart family since 1491.